“You can’t fabricate things,” Bennett said. “The Politico story was fabricated, and it was fabricated by a reporter who was arrested 10 years ago at the Republican National Convention protesting Republicans. I mean it’s ridiculous.”

Whether you think the Politico story casting doubt on Carson’s claims to have been offered a “full scholarship” to West Point was unfair or not, it was definitely not fabricated. In fact, it was Carson doing the fabricating when he said he was “offered a full scholarship to West Point,” which the Politico article debunked. At best, Carson was stretching the truth.

Even Cavuto seemed to think so. “There are enough questions have been raised about did he meet General Westmoreland? Did he not meet General Westmoreland?” Cavuto asked, referring to the general whom Carson claimed “offered” the scholarship at a meeting that could not have happened when he said it did.

“Without rehashing everything, there seems to be things that really, the I’s weren’t dotted, the t’s weren’t crossed, the story isn’t quite what it was first reported to be,” Cavuto added. “That doesn’t make Dr. Carson a liar, but it does call into question were there accidental exaggerations or formal exaggerations or misstatements, and does that or do you, as someone who manages his campaign, worry about the fallout as a trustworthy figure which he is, as polled in one instance after another?”

In short, no. Bennett said that Carson’s book (where Carson’s claim to have been offered a scholarship to West Point seems to have first appeared) “was written 25 years ago, about events 25 years even before that. Are details fuzzy? I’m sure. …That doesn’t mean - he did meet General Westmoreland. It was in February, and not May. Oh, my goodness, you know, boy, we’ve got a scandal. It’s probably going to be a 2 hour MSNBC special on it. The whole [Yale]-exam hoax. …All they had to do was call the Yale Record. …You know, that’s what BuzzFeed did, and guess what? Debunked. …Journalists are not even trying to do their homework, they’re trying to carry their agenda, and that’s what we object to.”

However, not all the details Carson’s account of the Yale hoax exam were corroborated. As BuzzFeed reported, Carson blamed the discrepancies that were found on his co-author.

While Carson may be winning with his base by playing the media victim (and never mind that poem Carson supposedly loves about having “yourself to blame” when things go badly), you have to wonder how well this will work in the long run. Media Matters has a pretty large round-up of media figures who have debunked Carson’s claim that he is being unfairly scrutinized.